Persona 5

For those of you who keep up with our podcast, you know that for some reason or another, I have not returned to Persona 5. I have been avoiding it like the plague. For a few weeks, I couldn’t tell why I had been avoiding it. Focusing instead on playing older games that I beat a few years ago. I’ve made my way through Vanquish, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Darksiders and the new Resident Evil 7. And just yesterday I started replaying Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s campaign again. I still have no inclination to pop that P5 bluray back in and attempt to pick up my regular life in Japan.

It irks me. I’m irked.

Finally, the other day it dawned on me as I was going through my daily “you should play Persona 5” battle in my head. The reason is this: the game stresses me out. No, seriously. Not joking, the game stresses me out. I constantly have this feeling in the game where I feel like I’m missing something. If I go watch a DVD, or hit up the batting cages-which is really fun to do-to level up some key attributes, then I miss out on key conversations with my HS buddies. If I choose to hang out with one character, I can’t hang out with the other character and now my repertoire with that character will start falling by the wayside.

I’m not sure how many of you approach games but when I feel like I’m missing some key story elements in a game, the dude does not abide. One time, during my first play-through of Mass Effect 2, a couple of my teammates died. I found out later that I could have done certain things to save them and you can bet your ass I started a new game and saved every single one of those beautiful bastards. But I can’t do that in Persona 5. Once you miss something, it’s gone and you gotta live with those choices. My problem is that watching a DVD should not take an entire night of my teenage life. I feel like I should have more time to do more things.

The game assumes that one activity cancels out all others. I mean, the DVD wasn’t Lord of the Rings so what gives? Why can’t I watch a regular movie with a friend, or visit a friend before watching a movie? And this is my problem with Persona 5. I feel like I’m missing content and that stresses me out. You could argue that you always miss content in other games and you’d be right, but the problem is that in Persona 5, I feel as if I’m missing main story content. And for that reason I’m avoiding it.

Which is a bizarre thing to say, right? Because now I’m missing the whole goddamn thing.

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